The balanced mind: the variability of task-unrelated thoughts predicts error monitoring

Abstract

Self-generated thoughts unrelated to ongoing activities, also known as “mind-wandering,” make up a substantial portion of our daily lives. Reports of such task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) predict both poor performance on demanding cognitive tasks and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the default mode network (DMN). However, recent findings suggest that TUTs and the DMN can also facilitate metacognitive abilities and related behaviors. To further understand these relationships, we examined the influence of subjective intensity, ruminative quality, and variability of mind-wandering on response inhibition and monitoring, using the Error Awareness Task (EAT). We expected to replicate links between TUT and reduced inhibition, and explored whether variance in TUT would predict improved error monitoring, reflecting a capacity to balance between internal and external cognition. By analyzing BOLD responses to subjective probes and the EAT, we dissociated contributions of the DMN, executive, and salience networks to task performance. While both response inhibition and online TUT ratings modulated BOLD activity in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) of the DMN, the former recruited a more dorsal area implying functional segregation. We further found that individual differences in mean TUTs strongly predicted EAT stop accuracy, while TUT variability specifically predicted levels of error awareness. Interestingly, we also observed co-activation of salience and default mode regions during error awareness, supporting a link between monitoring and TUTs. Altogether our results suggest that although TUT is detrimental to task performance, fluctuations in attention between self-generated and external task-related thought is a characteristic of individuals with greater metacognitive monitoring capacity. Achieving a balance between internally and externally oriented thought may thus aid individuals in optimizing their task performance.

Thinking too much: self-generated thought as the engine of neuroticism

“…Furthermore, the magnitude of the increase in DMN activity that the participants displayed while engaged in SGT was positively correlated with the magnitude of their self-reported tendency to daydream, suggesting that endogenous individual differences in the activity of the DMN are responsible for causing trait individual differences in the subjective experience of imagination-related processes. More recently, three studies used online experience sampling to show greater mPFC-PCC activity during periods of SGT [40][41][42].…”

Anticorrelation between default and dorsal attention networks varies across default subsystems and cognitive states

“…The idea that the DN and DAN may not be not strictly antagonistic is consistent with a large body of work indicating that the relationship between internal and external processing is context dependant . Moreover, given that the variability of mind-wandering is predictive of enhanced externally-oriented task performance (i.e., error awareness), this suggests a complex relationship between internal and external processing (M. Allen et al, 2013). In sum, DN-DAN interactions exhibit substantial temporal and contextual variability, suggesting that their relationship is influenced by changing mental states.…”

Self-Regulation, Mind Wandering, and Cognitive Absorption During Technology Use

“…We might think about our summer vacation plans while working on a manuscript or think about a research project while driving. Mind wandering experience is distinct from other cognitive behaviors in that it is not derived directly from an external stimulus; rather it forms a train of internally generated thoughts, perceptually decoupled from external environments and tasks being performed [2,12]. Findings from prior cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies suggest that mind wandering shares a number of common attributes with goaldirected thought, which occurs frequently during reasoning, problem solving, and decision-making tasks [13].…”